A Tale of Two Polls

Last week’s poll showed irrational exuberance from the American people over Obama, but a closer look actually shows the media is still hopelessly in the tank for the president. “Mr. Obama's overall approval rating, meanwhile, has hit a new high of 66 percent, up from 64 percent last month. His disapproval rating stands at 24 percent” boasted a press release from either CBS News or the Obama campaign. (It’s often difficult to distinguish the two.)

According to former Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell, “there is a problem” with the way the poll was conducted. “Their poll of all adults shows an extreme Democratic edge on party preference of 16 points… I know of no other public poll that has such an extreme partisan gap” says Caddell, once considered a star in Democratic Party circles until his insistence on honesty with the American people put him at odds with the Democrat Party leadership. In other words it appears the New York Times and CBS “News” cooked the poll numbers until they produced enough people who agreed with the opinions of their reporters about Obama. Caddell says “the original raw sample already showed a partisan difference of eight and a half percent but when weighing or ‘adjusting’ the numbers the partisan gap went over sixteen points. In effect what they did was reduce the Republicans in the sample by 13 percent and increased the number of Democrats by 12 percent. Particularly strange was the number of Independent voters was only changed 2 percent.” Caddell accuses The Times and CBS of being guilty of one of two things: “It is either terrible methodology or the Bernie Madoff school of polling. Small demographic adjustments are ordinary but these extremes are unprecedented.”

CBS used the same poll to proclaim, “Sixty-seven percent say world leaders respect Mr. Obama, while 18 percent say they do not respect the president. That's a sharp contrast to the response when this question was asked about Mr. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, in July 2006: Just 30 percent then said the president is respected by the leaders of other countries.” “Respect” is an odd choice of words considering Obama stood on European soil that is stained with the blood of American soldiers--- and apologized for American arrogance. The only apology Obama owes is the one to America for his arrogance.

On the other hand, a Pew Research poll conducted just before the NYT/CBS poll showed the new president in a different light. “For all of his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades.” Unsurprisingly, most people didn’t hear about the Pew study, it would have been very difficult for the media so desperate to paint Obama as being adored with the reality so different.

So now with tens of thousands of people nationwide showing their anger and frustration with Obama through the tea parties sprouting up organically, Obama is threatening the bankers who don’t want bailout funds that “I am the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks.”